If you see "capturing" is taking control of an area, you get TDM (where the "area" is the entire map).

Actually yes and no (Note: the following is my very subjective interpretation..).

TDM, if it would be played as TEAM Death Match, would be a meeting engagement, i.e. two forces advancing into the same (large) area with the goal to capture it, which is achieved by eliminating the opposing force (hmm, is it possible to end TDM when there's only one player of one team left?).

DTAS on the other hand is a advance/delay action focused around a specific tactically important (smaller) location. The attacker have to advance and capture the location while the defenders have to either delay the attckers for a sufficient time or inflict enough causualties._________________"Anything you do can get you killed, including doing nothing."

"This is a quasi-pleasant day. Almost not bad. Almost not bad at all..." Jon, 04.03.2009

Again, to make realistic gameplay you have to think about what would happen in real life.

TDM scenario is not copmletely unrealistic, but rather unlikely to happen IRL, since you usually try to control an area that actually matters for something, and TDM is just controlling some random area that is much bigger than what a small team can really control (which is why you have so much trouble ending a round).

DTAS is more like having to capture some kind of objective (use your wild imagination to pick something realistic), within a time limit (again use your wild imagination to pick a realistic cause for that time limit). This kind of scenario is much more likely to happen in real life. Capturing some random area and holding it, though, is not a very realistic scenario, as you're not really holding an area if there are still members of the other team anywhere in the zone that can just kill you later. Why did you even have a mission to hold that area in the firstplace? Simulating the flag as other (destroy/disable/pickup/whatever) objectives is a lot more realistic, and the capping rules should be defined accordingly.

Inflicting too many casualties on the enemy is not a realistic objective. I mean it would be, if the last player has no ability to finish the mission. However if the mission can be completed by killing all opposition, then as long as 1 player is alive the mission can be completed. The fact that requiring 2 cappers greatly enhances an already existing imbalance, combined with it not being very realistic for the kind of missions we're simulating, makes 2-capper-requirement a bad idea. Again, having a big cap radius is also a bad idea, and is only a necessity when you have 2-capper-requirement.

Anyway, defense have enough of an advantage just because they're defense (easier to ambush than to be ambushed), they have no right to complain that someone won by sneaking past them. Place the flag better and defend it better. Give more time for flag placement if needed._________________You don't mess with the Zohar!

Simulating the flag as other (destroy/disable/pickup/whatever) objectives is a lot more realistic, and the capping rules should be defined accordingly.

I guess I agree for the small teams we have due to the small ammount of players left. If you'd be able to put two half-platoon or platoon sized elements against each other (does UT support 32players?) I'd call capturing a certain area as realistic an objective as destroying something. There have been quite some wars that have been fought to a significant degree with small units which fought indepenently or quasi-independently (e.g. Vietnam as classic jungle war example) and where captureing an area was a reasonable objective.

galzohar wrote:

Inflicting too many casualties on the enemy is not a realistic objective.

Why not? Actually it's one of the major means for regular forces to achieve their objectives and in many cases inflicting causualties actually was the objective.

The USAAF attacked Berlin with their bombers primarily because they knew the Luftwaffe would be there to defend it; while they still picked strategically more or less important targets to bomb, the main objective of the tactic was to inflict heavy causualties on the Luftwaffe.

Also in guerilla warfare inflicting causualties can be a very viable objective, as well as in counter-guerilla operations; it won't ever be the main strategic objective and surely not the only tactical objective, but for an isolated mission it might as well be. US forces in Vietnam repeatedly attacked areas only to make contact and destroy the enemy forces suspected there. They left the areas again when the enemy had retreated - though usually not for long.

While I do agree that modern warfare has changed quite a bit to more "sophisticated" objectives even for regular troops, I'd not actually call inflicting causualties an unrealistic one._________________"Anything you do can get you killed, including doing nothing."

"This is a quasi-pleasant day. Almost not bad. Almost not bad at all..." Jon, 04.03.2009

While it can be realistic in some situations, they're very unlikely objective for the 5v5/10v10/etc kind of fights, and none of those can be simulated realistically in a game while keeping the it fair and playable.

Consider that when the objective is to control an area, there's generally more to it than just controlling it for the sake of control. You generally go to control an area because of a strategic/economical/whatever advantage. I don't know how the US army works exactly, but isn't platoon 3 squads? That's 30 players per team. Plus you'll need huge maps.

Anyway keep in mind games generally can do a good job in simulating a battle, but are very bad at simulating war, since if you simulate it properly, it'll end up a very boring game, since at war most of the time you're either not really doing anything (at least nothing interesting) or moving towards the (next) combat zone.

When they send a squad to take control of a house, it's usually in order to use that house to overwatch a road or something. When you assault a hill, it's because from there you can control the area surrounding it well, and if you don't control it your enemy will. Anyway, those kinds of missions, when performed in a large area, can never be truly defined as "success" or "fail" until you bring more forces/ UAV/whatever to completely sweep the area. Anyway those are not the kinds of missions you do with a small team against a small team.

If you look at America's Army, putting aside the fact the maps are badly designed and that they have more than 1 objective (which is either pointless or gives assault too much of an advantage, depends if you need to capture only 1 or all of them), they do have a good objective system. 10s in front of the PC to get the info - if you don't have cover and defenders care about defending you will get killed. On another map you need to take photos of weapons. On another you simply need to escape but there's only 1 path so it's defendable (too defendable, actually)._________________You don't mess with the Zohar!

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